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All his life Lamont Cherry has treated the children around him with "love and affection," his attorney told jurors in a final push Thursday morning for acquittal on charges he beat his girlfriend's infant daughter to death 19 months ago.

"To believe that Lamont Cherry inflicted severe injuries on Zalayia on that day, you would have to believe that in the space of one hour and change, he turned into a monster," the attorney, William Ruzzo, said in a closing argument.

Ruzzo spoke for more than an hour, navigating the jurors now deciding Cherry's fate along a sweeping narrative. He touched on Cherry's character; the possibility the child, Zalayia McCloe, could have been injured in an accidental fall; and the work of investigators, whom he said failed to test key evidence for DNA.

Assistant District Attorney Michael Vough followed with a more concise argument that focused on the core allegation in the case, that Cherry violently shook and beat 12-month-old Zalayia, fracturing her skull and severely damaging her brain.

Vough, speaking for about 20 minutes, illustrated his presentation with two disparate photographs - one of Zalayia smiling brightly on her first birthday, the other of her bruised and battered body during an autopsy less than a week later.

"You have to decide how Zalayia McCloe wound up like this, two days after her birthday," Vough said. "You have to decide if Lamont Cherry caused these injuries."

Cherry, facing the death penalty or a life sentence with a first-degree murder conviction, testified Wednesday that he had been caring for Zalayia at their Wilkes-Barre home while her mother and a relative ran errands.

Cherry said he left the girl alone for a short time downstairs while he went upstairs to put laundry away.

When he returned, he said, he found Zalayia lying at the base of the stairway, between the first step and a nearby set of dumb bells.

Cherry, the 37-year-old father of four boys, four girls and grandfather of one, always behaved with "gentility" and "patience" around children, Ruzzo said, recalling the testimony Wednesday of two character witnesses: Cherry's brother and the mother of one of his sons.

Cherry loved Zalayia, the child of girlfriend Christa Smith and another man, "as though it were a biological child," Ruzzo said. "You don't have to be a biological father to love a child."

Cherry frequently took care of Zalayia while Smith ran errands, Ruzzo said. He would feed her, change her diaper and sometimes take her for ice cream. He never abused Zalayia and doctors who treated her and performed an autopsy found no signs of prior abuse, Ruzzo said.

"One of the things you would look for in a child abuse case, certainly a homicide case is whether the child was injured before," Ruzzo told the jurors. "None of that was evident in this case."

After he found Zalayia lying near the stairs, Cherry said, he picked her up and carried her upstairs, but could not remember why. The child's mother, Smith, immediately knew something was wrong, Vough said. Zalayia had difficulty breathing and appeared discolored, and Cherry's decision to carry Zalayia upstairs seemed out of place, he said.

"Why would he take that child upstairs when every day, her testimony was, that child napped downstairs?" Vough said. "Actions speak louder than words."

Cherry had few words for the emergency medical technician and the police officer who responded to an initial 911 call. The technician described Cherry as "scared" and "fearful." The officer, Christopher Hardy, described him as "evasive."

"You know what evasive is in police language?" Ruzzo said. "Somebody who doesn't confess to a crime. When you tell them something they don't want to hear? That's evasive. Lord forgive him if he said, 'I don't want to talk to the police.' He had a right not to say anything, not to say a word. Yet, when he tried to tell them, 'I don't know what happened,' he's evasive."

Smith asked Cherry if Zalayia could have fallen down the stairs, Ruzzo said. Cherry's attorneys offered the scenario as an alternative to the prosecution's allegations.

"Everyone kept asking him to come up with a story. He didn't have one. He said, 'I don't know,'" Ruzzo said. "If he were going to make up a story that's his chance, right there. And he could have made up so many better stories."

Cherry told reporters Wednesday a police detective concocted an exchange in which he supposedly theorized Zalayia could have fallen off the third or fourth step and smashed her head into the dumb bells.

Police tested the dumb bells for blood, tissue and hair and found none. They did not, however, test for DNA and did not scope the house for other possible points of impact, Ruzzo said.

A defense expert, medical doctor and biomechanical engineer John Lenox, furthered the theory with testimony that Zalayia could have sustained skull fractures and severe brain injuries by falling from an elevation as slight as 32 inches.

Vough derided Lenox's testimony, underscored by the use of props including Silly Putty, a plastic skull, a tumbling wooden representation of the human body, as "entertaining" and "quite a show."

Lenox's findings, based in part on a German study in which infant cadavers were dropped head first from varying heights, did not mesh with the injuries Zalayia sustained, Vough said.

In addition to the skull fractures and brain trauma, she had deep internal bruising on her buttocks, layers of blood on her brain and her retinas were detached.

"I submit to you, that child was killed by that man," Vough said, turning toward Cherry. "He was the only one there. These injuries could not have been an accident."

Ruzzo, pushing for a verdict of not guilty, said Zalayia's death was an accident and implored jurors not to use Cherry's lack of candor or awareness against him.

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